Soul Is Ideology (灵魂是思想)

When I was having my Political Science lecture, my professor said:

 

“Politic is an end, ideology is the soul.”

 

This professor has elaborated with some examples of what the above sentence supposed to mean for almost one whole session, but the definition of the word ‘soul’ was still lingering in my mind.

 

So during the question and answer session at the end of the lecture, I braved myself to raise my hand and asked:

 

“Professor, what is a soul?”

 

The professor’s facial expression slightly turned grimed and cold for a second and replied:

 

“Soul is ideology, ideology is soul. The class is dismissed!”

 

I supposed the professor’s respond was a little emotional, but he was right, taken from a dictionary, a soul is defined as “the thought and action of humans etc.”

 

Of course, I was pulling my professor’s legs… I wasn’t asking about the ideology, but the ‘spirit’ of the person.

 

I got 50 marks for my Political Studies that semester, since then I started to understand; it is no benefit to ask the professor, one only needs to listen and memorize what is taught. And then blurs what was said from his/her memory and then let others to copy: this is real political studies.

 

Certainly, my prime interest of ‘soul’ is in the form of ‘spirits’ not the ‘ideology’. According to old folks, when a person lives, the ‘spirit’ is hiding inside him/her. Occasionally, this spirit will travel out of the body intentionally or unintentionally. But when one dies, this spirit would room the outside world as free as a bird.

 

Just to make this issue complex, when a person is still alive; people say that his/her ‘soul’ is with him/her. When he/she dies, his soul turns into ‘ghost’ in western world. In Chinese however, the term soul is formed by two characters ‘灵魂’. In old Chinese literature, the ‘灵魂’ and ‘魂灵’ is interchangeable, but this swap is not allowed now days.

 

Lets return to our discussion, are you interest in the ‘soul’ of living person, or a ghost of that person may I ask? Now you probably would think: Boy, even a simple soul can be complex! Am I correct in asking?